Prelude
by Freyja22
Summary: A young woman is on the run. One-shot.


My feet pound against the earth.

My lungs heave and shudder.

Branches whip and snap at my face.

I tear through the brush and brambles.

My skin screams at the contact; at the hair-like thorns now imbedded in my skin.

The soft, spongy earth absorbs the shock of my landing as I leap over a downed tree.

My feet make an impression in the ground; this somehow registers with me even in my urgency.

Miles have passed, but I could have miles to go.

Each stride takes everything out of me and somehow puts something back in.

I need to put more distance between me and the Biters.

I need to press on.

I need somewhere safe, somewhere high up, a vantage point.

But all I see is flat, sparse woodland.

Drab, brown leaves, scraggly pines.

Trees void of their leaves.

It's early afternoon; I can tell by the sun.

I stop.

I strain my ears, listening.

I can hardly hear anything over my heartbeat thudding in my skull.

I am wide-eyed and dry-mouthed.

The blood pools in my legs from my abrupt stop.

Can't stop.

No time for full thoughts.

Keep going.

I run.

My sickle slaps at my left thigh, my hammer at my right.

My feet ache from the distance I've traveled.

A second wave finds me.

I've run straight into the back side of a second cluster.

They must have felt me, my feet sending vibrations through the dirt, before they ever saw me.

They are already turning to look at me.

I skid to avoid them.

What direction should I go?

I can't go forward.

I can't go back.

Left or right?

Right.

It's a split decision which I can only pray is the correct one.

I all but slap my hair away from my face, always in the way.

I'd give anything for a rubber band, or even some string to tie it up.

I should cut it all off.

It's not like I have anyone to look nice for anymore.

Why these are the thoughts I am having as I dodge Biters; I couldn't explain.

They've all started to look the same.

Tattered, grungy, greasy, grimy, clothing.

Bloody, caked with dirt and viscera.

Horrible things, terribly sad things.

I have a hand on my pistol, feeling it.

I have seven bullets, but only if there's no other out.

Six for them.

One for me.

I will not become one of them.

Every second counts.

Hell, every millisecond counts.

I don't want to take the time to stop to stab any in the head.

Another might get me from the side or from behind in the process.

So I just keep dodging them.

Hoping that I can make it out somehow.

I don't know where Des is.

Don't think about him, don't think about him.

My emotions threaten to boil over, but I put a cap on that.

Where am I?

More trees, more flat forest.

More leaves and brush.

It's never-ending.

I collide with something.

My breath escapes, causing me to emit a low hrumph as the wind is knocked out of me.

It moves, the thing I slammed into is moving, scrambling.

It registers with me that Biters don't move like that.

It's a wave of dark clothing and brown hair, the lifelessness of faded leather.

A flash of lime green, something heavy, something solid lands on my leg.

Groaning envelops us.

We rise and surge forward, something is touching me from behind.

Cold hands on my hot skin

Dead hands.

I grab at my sickle and swing back-handed over my shoulder.

The blade cracks through the bone and the creature goes limp against me.

There is still something about the sound; about the feeling of metal against bone that gets me.

Each time my body reacts physically to the sensation and sound.

I push back, I will not be buried underneath this thing that was once human.

I withdraw my blade from the skull, the scraping sound goes through me again.

I feel something fly by my head causing a rush of wind it's so close.

My head swings in the direction it was headed and I see a Biter fall to the earth, lifeless.

The end of a black and green arrow is protruding from a female Biter's head.

I hear yelling, rough and ragged.

It is a man, he's yelling at me to run.

I take off again, this time with someone by my side.

My hope is steadily restored.

Of all the bodies around me, I ran into the one warm one.

What were to odds of that?

There is no time to assess him; to know if he is a threat or a friend.

We run, we dodge, we evade and stab.

I bludgeon one with my hammer, swinging the claw end at another.

He takes a heavy-handed swing at one head, bashing it with one strike of the butt end of his weapon.

We run a while longer, weaving through trees.

We are slowing, but I still have not had a chance to look at him.

I just get blurs of clothing, skin, hair, a crossbow.

The forest practically spits us out and we're on a road.

You've gotta love rural Georgia.

The sounds of moaning and shuffling have faded away and we are alone, but our journey has only just begun.

* * *

So, I'm pretty sure that I won't be going any further with this, it will probably stay a one-shot at least for now. Especially since I'm already working on another Walking Dead story, but I needed a break from writing that one so I wrote this the other day and just decided to post it.


End file.
